kind of epilepsy by herself, over in the darkest corner of the room,
among the tubs.

When divested of the strange Western expletives and imprecations with
which the old man used to spice his reminiscences, some of them are
enough. I remember one, telling how Peter Walker "raised the wind" on
a particular occasion, when he got short of money on his way to some
distant trading-post, in a district strange to him. It is before me,
in short-hand, on the pages of an old, old pocket-book, and I will
tell it with some slight improvements on the narrator's style, such as
suppressing his unnecessary combinations of the curse.

Mounted on a two-hundred-dollar buffalo-horse, for which he would not
have taken double that amount, Peter Walker found himself, one
afternoon, near the end of a long day's ride. He had but little
baggage with him, that little consisting entirely of a bowie-knife and
holster-pistols,--for the revolver was a scarce piece of furniture
then and there. Of money he was entirely destitute, having expended
his last dollar upon the purchase of his noble steed, and of the
festive suit of clothes with which he calculated upon astonishing
people who resided outside the limits of civilization. The pantaloon
division of that suit was particularly superb, consisting principally
of a stripe by which the outer seam of each leg was made conducive to
harmony of outline. He was about three days' journey from the
trading-post to which he was bound. The country was a frontier one,
sparsely provided with inns.

The sun was framed in a low notch of the horizon, as he approached a
border-hostelry, on the gable of which "Cat's Bluff Hotel" was painted
in letters quite disproportioned in size to the city of Cat's Bluff,
which consisted of the house in question, neither more nor less. In
that house Peter Walker decided upon sojourning luxuriously for that
night, at least, if he had to draw a check upon his holsters for it.

Having stabled his horse, then, and seen him supplied with such
provender as the place afforded, he looked about the hotel, which he
found to be an institution of very considerable pretensions. It seemed
to have a good deal of its own way, in fact, being the only house of
entertainment for many miles upon a great south-western thoroughfare,
from which branched off the trail to be taken by him tomorrow,--a
trail which led only to the trading-post or fort already mentioned.

The deportment of the landlord was